[Winter 2024]

By Jérôme Delgado

Art Mûr, Montréal
9.09.2023 — 28.10.2023

[Excerpt]

In still and moving images, as well as by various other means (installation, ambient sound, found objects), the exhibition Transvasements takes us to the south of France for a boat trip – in an old fishing boat, to be precise, furnished with a hammock-tent. In the videos, shorelines of fields and industrial installations scroll by on the horizon, along with low-angle shots of skies or the underside of bridges. Through a contemplative and poetic lens, the Quebec artist Patrick Beaulieu scrutinizes a landscape as shaped by human beings…

An expert navigator and an explorer of territories beyond rivers, Beaulieu has constantly roamed great distances since his pursuit of migrating butterflies (Vecteur monarque, 2007). Transvasements, which took him from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean Sea via the Canal des Deux Mers (the combination of the Canal latéral à La Garonne and the Canal du Midi), falls within his noble and beneficent quest to understand the world and its beauties. His choice to follow artificial watercourses speaks volumes about the critical, if tenuous, purpose of his undertaking.

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 125 – AGGLOMERATIONS ]
[ Complete article, in digital version, available here: Patrick Beaulieu, Transvasements – Jérôme Delgado ]